Bulk Apothecary drives higher profits with BigCommerce Enterprise

Business goal

Sustain momentum while moving

Founded in 2010, Bulk Apothecary has become one of the nation's largest online suppliers of natural ingredients and essential oils. The company offers everything from small retail sizes up to full truckloads on over 9,000 product SKUs, all ready to ship same day if necessary.

With rising demand from both consumers and large corporations, the Bulk Apothecary team knew they needed a reliable, long-term home for their growing online store. Their new ecommerce platform had to be reliable, support aggressive revenue targets and enable the business to continue scaling.

In 2014, the company opted to use Magento, an on-premise solution. After 10 months working to customize the platform, they had spent tens of thousands of dollars to deal with frequent performance issues, frustrating glitches and unreliable integrations. This not only slowed growth, but limited the team’s ability to invest in effective sales and marketing initiatives.

“Between daily maintenance, custom development work, licenses and hosting fees, we were spending tens of thousands of dollars in unforeseen costs just to keep the store running,” said business owner Gary Pellegrino Jr.

With expenses mounting and website troubleshooting becoming a liability, Bulk Apothecary decided to move its business to BigCommerce Enterprise.

Topics Covered

BigCommerce benefit

A scalable platform and seamless migration

BigCommerce Enterprise’s robust, cloud-based solution supported Bulk Apothecary’s business goals while eliminating unpredictable hosting, licensing and development costs. The platform’s reduced complexity allowed the team to focus on the goal of becoming the nation’s largest online supplier of natural products.

It was crucial that Bulk Apothecary’s customers continued to receive a top-notch experience during the migration process. BigCommerce’s in-house migrations team and Blue Fish Development Group, a BigCommerce implementation partner, executed the move seamlessly.

The storefront was replicated on the BigCommerce platform in just four weeks, a significant improvement compared to the 10 months spent trying to create a robust shopping experience on Magento. And the business didn’t experience any loss in search rankings or sales as a result of the move. “The BigCommerce team was able to work with us and make sure all our data was migrated in a clean, structured way,” said Pellegrino.

We expected to see a modest dip in revenue due to seasonality, but since switching our online sales are up 15–20%.Gary Pellegrino Jr., President

Big Results

Higher revenue, lower costs

20%

10%

$50k+

20%

increase in sales

increase in conversion

saved on hosting and licensing

of abandoned cart revenue recovered

Moving to BigCommerce Enterprise turned Bulk Apothecary’s slowest selling season into a growth driver. “We decided to move to BigCommerce during our slow season to limit any impact on our business,” said Pellegrino. “We expected to see a modest dip in revenue due to seasonality, but since switching our online sales are up 15–20%.”

Since migrating, the team has been able to effectively run their business instead of troubleshooting platform issues. Conversion is up 10%, and the company’s bottom line has improved by eliminating more than $50,000 in hosting and licensing fees.

The team was also able to implement immediate improvements based on insights from the BigCommerce Analytics platform. According to Pellegrino, “The new analytics really allowed us to dig into our data and see what’s working and what’s not across our business.”

We talked with a lot of people when we were making the decision to scrap a $250k program on Magento. Ultimately, our research and past experience with BigCommerce gave us the confidence to re-platform.Gary Pellegrino Jr., President